Cool and PPY - these are indeed valid queries you have raised. The basic answer is that the 'task' presented to the crew was a very simple one as far as we can tell from the report - fly the a/c, set a 'safe' attitude and if necessary then adjust power while the rest of the actions were completed. As you can read to the point of complete boredom and disillusionment on all these threads, both pilots failed this task.
The idea of a 'straight and level' 'fallback' autopilot function is a good one, except that as you will both doubtless know, once you start coding for this you will find there will probably be situations where that is not the best solution.
However, the idea has merit and is worthy of discussion here. Something needs doing as we all recognise. The ideal is having pilots that can undertake a relatively simple task, but if we fail there your system may have to come into play.
We need to take it step further, of course, to the ?eventual? pilot-less a/c and when this mode would be triggered and under which parameters. Not easy!