Former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani deserves credit for acknowledging his recent comments about President Barack Obama went too far. It’s time for all sides to show more civility as we continue to discuss and debate the future of this nation.

Last week, Giuliani said Obama doesn’t love America. That was wrong of him, and he knows it.

“There has been no shortage of news coverage — and criticism — regarding comments I made about President Obama at a political gathering last week in New York,” he wrote in the Wall Street Journal on Sunday. “My blunt language suggesting that the president doesn’t love America notwithstanding, I didn’t intend to question President Obama’s motives or the content of his heart.”

That’s right — and that’s where so much of today’s heated political rhetoric falls short. We should talk about policies, not motives — because we don’t know what’s in another’s heart.

Giuliani gets that — now.

“I cannot read President Obama’s mind or heart, and to the extent that my words suggested otherwise, it was not my intention,” he wrote on Sunday. “When asked last week whether I thought the president was a patriot, I said I did, and would repeat that. I bear him no ill will, and in fact think that his personal journey is inspiring and a testament to much of what makes this country great.”

Of course, both sides of the aisle are capable of incivility. It got particularly bad during the recent congressional campaigns.

While campaigning in Wisconsin, Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz declared that Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker “has given women the back of his hand. I know that is stark. I know that is direct. But that is reality.”

Wasserman Schultz knew this was highly inflammatory rhetoric — but it was intentional. It wasn’t off-the-cuff, it was planned.

She later added, “What Republican Tea Party extremists like Scott Walker are doing is they are grabbing us by the hair and pulling us back.”

There’s no place for the language of domestic violence in political debate.

Of course, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi took it further; in an interview with liberal talk show host Bill Maher, she claimed, “Civilization as we know it today would be in jeopardy if Republicans win the Senate.”

Maher was aghast; he challenged her on it, and she said. “Yeah, no, it’s really important.”

The point here is that we need civility from all sides.

“Our nation is divided as hardly ever before between the left and the right. We are at loggerheads on profoundly important political and social questions. Civilization itself is under barbaric attack from without,” writes Ed Feulner of the Heritage Foundation. “Sadly, too many of us are not rising to these challenges as a democratic people. … If we are to prevail as a free, self-governing people, we must first govern our tongues and our pens. Restoring civility to public discourse is not an option. It is a necessity.”

Giuliani provided a good example last week — of both incivility and civility.