How do I alter the position of a column in a PostgreSQL database table?

I've tried the following, but I was unsuccessful:

ALTER TABLE person ALTER COLUMN dob POSITION 37;

"Alter column position" in the PostgreSQL Wiki says:

PostgreSQL currently defines column order based on the attnum column of the pg_attribute table. The only way to change column order is either by recreating the table, or by adding columns and rotating data until you reach the desired layout.

You can also define a VIEW that specifies the order of columns how you like it, without changing the physical position of the column in the base table.

That's pretty weak, but this is not a knock against PostgreSQL. In their defense, standard SQL has no solution for repositioning a column, and some other SQL implementations besides PostgreSQL follow this standard.

• Microsoft SQL Server - requires recreating the table or creating a view.
• IBM DB2 - requires recreating the table or creating a view.
• SQLite - requires recreating the table or creating a view.
• Oracle 12c - you can reorder columns as a side-effect of marking columns invisible then visible again.
• Informix - you can alter the position of a column to before another named column.
• MySQL - you can alter the position of a column to after another named column, or to the first in the table.

SQL implementations that support changing the ordinal position of a column are defining an non-standard extension to SQL syntax.