As for the theory being obvious, as far as I know, no one has proposed it before. Some interesting things come up for a Google Scholar search for "election cha

As for the theory being obvious, as far as I know, no one has proposed it before. Some interesting things come up for a Google Scholar search for "election charisma" (sans quotes). See "Charisma in the 1952 Election", The American Political Science Review, 1954. From a quick skim of this and some other search results, it looks like the theory has been explored a bit and not found much supporting evidence.