There's a temptation to say this, but how about if we look at primaries instead.
In 2004, John Kerry was able to overcome Howard Dean and John Edwards amongst others. Kerry was perhaps the least charismatic candidate in the entire field.
My man Dukakis defeated Jesse Jackson in 1988.
Walter Mondale was up against Gary Hart and Jesse Jackson in 1984.
On the Republican side, Huckabee, Romney and Giuliani were arguably all more charismatic than McCain in 2008. Reagan was certainly more charismatic than Ford in 1976, although the latter did have the advantage of incumbency.
Largely because primaries aren't a fair fight, in pretty much every one of your cases the "party establishment" was trying to stack the deck in favour of the boring winning candidate.
