Washington (CNN) He was a war hero who survived more than five years of torture as a prisoner in Vietnam and the 2008 Republican presidential nominee, but it's John McCain's role as a legislator that may have most defined his public life.

A two-term congressman and a senator for more than three decades, McCain shaped US policy on everything from immigration to foreign policy, spoke out against the country's use of enhanced interrogation practices during the George W. Bush administration and irrevocably changed the very body in which he served.

On Friday, McCain came home to the Senate one last time, becoming only the 31st person to lie in state in the US Capitol, a rare honor reserved for government officials and military officers. While minutes before the sun had shone over the dome, as McCain, carried by an honor guard, ascended the steps, the clouds opened and rain poured down.

Shortly before 11 a.m., McCain's body entered the Capitol Rotunda. They set the casket atop President Abraham Lincoln's catafalque, a wooden structure that has been used for decades for such services. McCain's former colleagues looked on.

Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a man who at times fought on the opposite side of McCain on issues like campaign finance, remembered McCain as a tough political opponent.

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