Folksy

Dan Rather, a folksy longtime journalist, humorously declared: "Beware of pastries, easy credit and politicians' promises."

It’s not hard to see why most people don’t feel like they fit in well with either party. But as long as the folksy and brainy contingents stay on opposite sides of the dance floor, we can look forward to a lot more of this. Bifurcation by education is always bad, but it’s worse for the educated group, because they’ll always be outnumbered. You simply cannot build a political coalition on the expectation that everybody’s going to do the reading. If the brainy group is going to survive, it has to find a way to reunite with the folksy. So maybe it’s worth taking some cues from the most successful ideologies of all time, the ones that have kept the brainy and folksy strains intertwined for thousands of years.

Near-synonym: chummy

Mr. Clooney, as a veteran spacewalker, with his resonant voice and folksy yarns, seems to be channeling every imperturbable astronaut you ever heard speaking from on high.