"Probably no other New Zealand politician in the twentieth century has been publicly idolised, then reviled, to the extent that [Gordon] Coates was. Tall and handsome, a war hero with a Military Cross and Bar from the First World War, Coates had a pleasant manner. He was a successful minister in the early 1920s, and seemed full of promise when he became Prime Minister. In 1925 he carried the Reform Party to its greatest victory. He became a national icon, representing emotional force as well as physical energy, and a degree of modesty, all essential ingredients of what at the time was called a 'man's man'. Coates also had great appeal to women. He seemed to personify the young nation's virility and patriotism. Exactly a decade later, however, sections of the population hated him. 'No man had more slanderous stories told about him,' an old friend commented years later. Even Coates's colleagues were content to let him incur the odium for the unpopular measures Government had introduced. 'Before standing for Parliament I thought I was an ordinary decent citizen, but now I find I have committed every crime in the calendar, except murder,' Coates told his electoral committee in the mid-1930s. By 1945 Coates's party sought to put his memory behind them as they exorcised the Depression. He had seldom been mentioned in later years by National or Labour politicians." [p.1]"Coates had many personal strengths, but lacked the ruthless streak without which Prime Ministers seldom succeed. It was many years since Coates had left the Northland bush, but it never entirely left him. He was well brought up and had meticulous dress sense, but lacked what English political biographers call 'gravitas.'At the 1926 Imperial Conference he is said to have breezed into a meeting of Imperial Prime Ministers, all of them rather more polished than he was, and announced to the slightly bemused gathering, 'So the gang's all here.' ... Coates was an intriguing and sometimes disconcerting blend of his conventional parenting and the environment in which he grew up." [p. 4]
