Obviously, none of us would have dropped the ball as badly as Bush has done - we hope. For the sake of discussion, though, assume we had.
Focus on the aftermath. If you totally failed, as President of the United States - or even the head of your Border's Reading Group - and as a result, people died, what would you do?
The first thing I'd do would be active, total engagement of all resources at my command. Then I would APOLOGIZE, publicly. To the people of New Orleans, their families, and all of America. Assuming full culpability for both my own failure and that of others in my employ, I would vow that as soon as search and rescue operations completed, there would be a full independent investigation commissioned by me, and allow full access to documentation.
After that, I'd avoid photo-ops in the area, choosing instead to visit individually with families to personally apologize and first responders, including all the officials from the affected state, and have a slew of support staff on hand to get their full accounting, recommendations and list of complaints.
I'd then promptly go shoot myself, because the guilt of being responsible for so much needless death would take over.
If this was any of us in our regular job situation, bare minimum accountability would include resignation. But high on the list would be something obvious - apology.
Allowing Bush all the photo-ops and PR in the world, he's still not going to ever fully recover from this. The reasons are myriad, but stem from the same arrogance and hubris he and his criminal administration have shown from the start. The same attitude that explains the federal failure in New Orleans, actually.
Only this time, Americans want answers and they want a leader who can admit a mistake. Otherwise, the scent of death hanging over New Orleans will linger with all of us, knowing that Bush's zero change, zero accountability policies can only result in continued failure and disaster when the next emergency invariably arrives.
So - a few thousand people have died needlessly on your watch and it's time for you to face your people.
What would you do?