Clinton Says He Has Rebounded; Some Not Convinced : Democrats: The Arkansas governor comes out swinging at Brown, but boos are mixed with cheers at a Wall Street appearance.

As Bill Clinton walked the streets of Brooklyn on Thursday, he said his presidential campaign in this unforgiving city had turned a corner because he had shown that he could “take a punch and give one out.”

But the construction foremen standing watch as Clinton passed by suggested that mere combativeness may not be enough. “Hey,” Joe Tangney said as he nudged the partner at his side, “here comes Slick Willie.”

It was that kind of day for Clinton, who seemed determined to project his campaign as having regained its fighting form but who could not quite dispel the reminders of how much he has yet to battle.

At a noontime rally on Wall Street, Clinton swung ever harder at his rival, Edmund G. (Jerry) Brown Jr., calling the former California governor’s flat-tax proposal “the most reactionary proposal ever made in a presidential campaign in my lifetime or yours.”

But the oddly passive crowd greeted Clinton with as many scattered boos as cheers. And, after the candidate stepped down from the stage to press the flesh with voters, he returned to the microphone.

“I want to thank everyone who said to me, ‘Hang in there,’ ” he said. “I’m hanging in there for you; I want you to hang in there with me.”

There was no doubt that Clinton remained determined to confront adversity head on. He started the day with a telephone call to New York talk-radio tormentor Don Imus, who delights in mocking the Arkansas governor as “Bubba.”

“Where I come from, it’s a compliment,” Clinton said on the call-in show. “Bubba is Southern for mensch “--a Yiddish expression for a responsible person. He also tried to turn another joke upon himself. Pilloried for announcing that he “didn’t inhale” when he experimented with marijuana, he told Imus that he liked to play the saxophone because you only needed to breathe out.

And he ended the evening with an appearance on a television talk show in which he dedicated an Elvis Presley song as “my message to the New York press.” Then he broke into a hoarse rendition of “Don’t Be Cruel.”

His strategy seemed designed to portray Clinton as a candidate beleaguered but undeterred. He told reporters at one point that he had “taken a rough beating from the media” and wanted to make clear that he was not about to back down.

His apparent new confidence was bolstered by a poll that showed him running 11 points ahead of Brown about a week before Tuesday’s primary--as well as his performance a day earlier when a televised showdown with talk-show host Phil Donahue helped him win positive press coverage here for the first time in more than a week.

“I believe that we’re doing better,” he said in Brooklyn as he finished a 45-minute walk through the borough’s downtown streets. “I feel good about it, and I hope we’ve turned the corner.”

The candidate, meanwhile, asserted that he had halted an apparent erosion of support by being willing to fight back. “I think people see, No. 1, that I can be tough enough to lead this country,” he said. “I can take a punch and give one out.”

But the proclamations of courage did not prevent Clinton from having to answer questions about his character at nearly every stop.

In Brooklyn, where the Arkansas governor stopped briefly at the construction site, Tangney and his fellow foremen not only were questioning Clinton’s character, but also had their minds made up.

“The way he comes across, I just don’t trust him,” said Jeff Gross, a work boot-clad man in his late 30s who said he would vote for Brown.

A third supervisor, Neil Burstein, had reached the same conclusion.

Like the other men, he cited the way Clinton had responded to allegations about his personal conduct. “He’s already lying,” Burstein said, “and he isn’t even President yet.”