This is our presidential choice for 2016, the occupants of a clown car or a limo loaded with baggage.

When all of the men and a woman finally announce they’re running for the Republican presidential nomination, there’s concern about how to fit them all on a stage for their first debate. This highly anticipated event is what’s being compared to the clown car, the auto that parks in the center ring of the circus to unload a never ending cargo of clowns.

This may be a bit unfair.

They are, after all, a highly skilled, experienced group of professionals who can be counted on to perform well. I mean the clowns.

Fox News, the debate host, sees a partial solution in limiting the field to the top 10 candidates in five national polls, a decision already drawing passionate protests from the eight or so expected to finish eleventh and on down. CNN is said to be planning a second, losers’ debate for the bottom eight, which should be fun. As of now, respectable candidates like John Kasich and Lindsey Graham would be in the losers’ debate on CNN while unlikely nominees such as Ben Carson and Donald Trump make the “A Team” by polling in the Top 10.

At the other end are the Democrats who could use a few more highly skilled professionals on the election vehicle transporting Hillary Clinton and the few trying to defeat her. The Democratic clown car looks like an older limo loaded with baggage, but carrying just a single, disdainful passenger and a few others hanging on to the bumper.

But the Republicans and their clown car are more interesting. Consider:

Unless I missed someone, there are now eight announced candidates — Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Mike Huckabee, Ben Carson, Rick Santorum, George Pataki and Carly Fiorina.

Cruz and Paul have been in the Senate for half a term and Rubio has been there for a third of a term. They will not be using Barak Obama’s lack of experience as a talking point. Huckabee, a former Arkansas governor, retired from commenting on Fox News and doing TV commercials for a bogus diabetes cure. Fiorina, the only woman, and Ben Carson, the only black, have another distinction. Neither has ever been elected to anything.

Fiorina says she’s the best person for the job because she “knows how the economy actually works” and proved it by becoming CEO of Hewlett Packard, laying off 30,000 workers and getting fired after engineering a disastrous merger. Carson, a famous neurosurgeon, was the first to surgically separate twins conjoined at the head, but beyond that, he’s known for comparing Obamacare to slavery and comparing the United States to Nazi Germany.

Sen. Lindsey Graham has not announced yet but he confirmed his eligibility for the clown car by going on the CBS Morning News to make “a very important announcement” that turned out to be an announcement he would be making an announcement in June.

Governors Chris Christie, who’s made a dozen trips to Iowa in order to think about running, and Scott Walker, best known for fighting with state employee unions, are poised to run. Christie must wait for the George Washington Bridge lane closing scandal to blow over and Walker has to improve his foreign policy smarts.

When Bob Schieffer asked Walker to identify the greatest foreign policy achievement of his lifetime, he said it was Ronald Reagan’s firing of striking air traffic controllers. Asked why not something more foreign, like Nixon going to China, Walker said firing the unionized controllers let the Russians know Reagan was strong.

Then we have Jeb Bush, the party establishment favorite who lost ground when he answered a question about his brother’s decision to go to war in Iraq four different ways before getting it right. It brought to mind George (not Mitt) Romney’s quick decline in 1968 when he answered a question about going to war in Vietnam by replying he’d been brainwashed.

We have others but there’s just so much space in a column or on a stage. However, one can’t write about candidates and clowns without mentioning Donald Trump who promises an announcement that’s “going to surprise a lot of people.” This means:

(A) He’s running

(B) He’s not running

(C) He’ll say he knows how to surgically separate twins conjoined at the head.

You can reach Dick Ahles at dahles@hotmail.com.