In 1984, Glastris was working for his father in the advertising business, when he decided to move to Washington, D.C. He found an unpaid internship, then a staff job at the
Washington Monthly from 1985 to 1986. In 1987 he was a freelance writer in Washington. From 1988 to 1998, Glastris was a correspondent and editor for
U.S. News & World Report. Glastris covered the Midwest from
U.S. News & World Reports
Chicago bureau. He did this during two presidential campaigns, the
Mississippi floods of 1993, and the rise of the
Michigan Militia. From 1995 to 1996, he worked as Bureau Chief in
Berlin, Germany where he was responsible for covering the former
Yugoslavia in the final months of the
Bosnia War. He also wrote stories while staying in
Germany,
Russia, Greece, and Turkey. While working as a speechwriter for
President Bill Clinton from 1998 to 2001, Glastris wrote drafts of more than 200 speeches on a variety of subjects such as education, health care, and the budget. He helped write the
State of the Union addresses in
1999 and
2000. In 1999, Glastris traveled with President Clinton to
Turkey and
Greece and wrote the President's address to Greece. Glastris developed Clinton's "DC Reads this Summer" program. This program "put over 1000 federal employees as volunteer reading tutors in Washington, DC public schools." In 2000, he was also responsible for co-writing the President's address to the
Democratic convention in
Los Angeles. Glastris has been the editor-in-chief of the
Washington Monthly since 2001. He was a Bernard L. Schwartz Fellow at
New America Foundation from 2008 to 2010, and is a senior fellow at the Western Policy Center in
Washington, D.C. ==Personal life==